I am not a dedicated raider, but I love raiding. Since I can never commit to the raiding schedules that guilds require of their raiders, I am in a constant state of pugging. When I'm not actively in a pug, I am scanning the trade channel looking for one that will have all the qualities required to be successful- gear, experience, patience, and maybe a little bit of luck. When I find such a group, I'm ecstatic. But more often than not, I face group after group of impatient, inexperienced, and under geared scrubs who simply want to be carried to the final boss so they can get their [EPIC LOOT] Those groups often end in a way that everyone who has ever pugged is familiar with- people getting frustrated and leaving. But every now and then, there is a group that fails so bad, the fail is almost a win, in and of itself, for being such a unique level of fail.

A new game came out: Rift. I'll be honest, I didn't even know what it was until somebody mentioned it to me. Then I googled and was pretty amazed, because it actually looked fairly decent. I've shopped around for alternatives to wow before, but never really found anything. Games were just lacking in general, had poor support, shitty graphics, or an unsatisfactory population. I've always ended up going back to wow.

Rift though... Rift might take the place of wow for me. I'm loving the graphics, the character options, the world events that incorporate everyone of every level. The environment is...acceptable. There will always be trolls, but overall, the playerbase seems slightly more mature than wow.

So now I'm learning this new game. There's always a learning curve, but Rift doesn't really seem to have an exceptionally steep curve. And, since it did just come out, nearly everybody else is on the same curve.